The Shuttered Eye

Published by Bloodaxe Books, 1995

Julia Copus’s poems view some of the most turbulent moments in life through a sharp, clear lens: mature, uncomfortably honest, uncompromising — Maura Dooley

She slips skilfully in and out of figures from myth, fairytale, art and literature… Her poetry is deft, and seethes with anxiety and displacement. Where she will go after this accomplished debut is anyone’s guess — Maggie O’Farrell, Poetry London

Julia Copus’s poems view some of the most turbulent moments in life through a sharp, clear lens: mature, uncomfortably honest, uncompromising

— Maura Dooley

She slips skilfully in and out of figures from myth, fairytale, art and literature… Her poetry is deft, and seethes with anxiety and displacement. Where she will go after this accomplished debut is anyone’s guess

— Maggie O'Farrell, Poetry London

Copus is a young British poet, but her poems are already accomplished enough to have won her a number of major prizes, including the coveted Eric Gregory Award… [She] is also a skilled prosodist, as at home in free verse as in traditional forms like the sonnet and the rhymed quatrain… Highly recommended for all literature collections

— B Galvin, Central Connecticut State University

If Julia Copus, for one, is singing her songs, I would willingly keep my ears unstopped by wax, untie myself from the mast and let her rocks take their toll. What a way to go!